I was asked today to help someone cheat on an entrance exam. The fact that I didn't want to took the asker not only by surprise but was taken very personally, to the extent that all communication with the person has ceased. Now, I'm all for cultural relativism in certain situations, but I don't think that this is one of them. As an educator, I am more than happy to volunteer my time with people who want help preparing for a test. That's no problem. But being asked to help someone cheat, with them sending me messages on their phone (how they got a phone into the test without hiding it in their body cavities eludes me), images--that's right IMAGES--of the test and asking me to send answers back in response railed against every last one of my scholarly sensibilities. Anyway, where were the proctors, as the person took out their camera phone and took a photo of the test paper?
My friend used an "everyone is doing it" argument to try and persuade me. This particulary tack ceased to be a particularly compelling one for me since I was about 6 years old, and mom made it clear to me that jumping off a bridge because everyone else was doing it was not an acceptable course of action. But out here, the "everyone else is doing it" tactic is inflected with an us-vs-them mentality that says "the powers that be are not only taking everything, but also very corrupt, so I'm going to help my people get a piece of that pie." I had never quite experienced this situation and it plunged me into something of a moral dilemma. I might--though I'm squeamish even about that--bend rules for family, but I'm still not sure if I'm doing anybody a service by helping them cheat on an exam. They're supposed to be passing exams on skill, proving ability, earning promotions, etc. By cheating, they participate in a culture of corruption that I, personally, can stand. It was argued to me that the exams were silly, mandated by outside presences, and arbitrary. To this, I personally look to my own experience of having to take a French examination for my candidacy exam. To me, it seems that a person should just soldier on with their work. If you've got a job to do, instead of cheating on said job, just do it. This is, admittedly, a distinctly non-twenty-first century China view, but I think a little bit of a sense of personal honor would go a long way. I'd have been happy to help with exam prep, but actually taking the exam (as if I have nothing better to do) is another matter. There's another level for this: I don't like being used. I have occasionally been chided for doing too many things for free, but I only really do things for free if a) if I feel strongly about the thing I'm doing or b) I feel like that person isn't using me. Since my wedding, I have been asked to do many things for free that I don't really appreciate, and I have generally acquiesced in the name of family. Today, one of the same people who has suggested I should not give my time away, not only allowed herself to be used by a hometown former high school classmate (I was literally asked to do this for an acquaintance's former high school classmate's husband), who had not contacted her for years. Her thought was that if she didn't help, she would get a bad reputation in her hometown. This seems just silly. Asking someone to be their own person does not seem grounds for a bad reputation. Afterwards, I asserted that I never even wanted to be asked again. My friend was extremely angry. It seemed that I had broken some barrier, that I had betrayed not only the person, but the person's family, and perhaps the entire ethnic situation in Western China. To me though, it still seems an issue of a teacher doing a teacher's job. If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for his life.
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About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |